sinc.

I am a photographer based in London using traditional photographic techniques, exhibiting and working as a film stills photographer. Prior to the residency at Wysing, I was beginning to explore new ways of working. I had undertaken a public art residency as part of Year of the Artist 2000, which enabled me to extend my practice and move into digital image making. This project culminated in the production of work on a very large scale for Lee Valley Regional Park Authority. 'Pregnant in Lee Valley' is still to be shown.
Being awarded the art and science residency at Wysing has allowed me to investigate further new areas of working. Spending a year at a rural idyll with funding to produce work was an exciting and occasionally overwhelming prospect. The emphasis on professional development and the brief to create some sort of link between two sites was challenging, and doing all this sixty miles from home in an arts centre with other artists looking on was daunting!

The project started as a science/art residency but during the course of the year it became evident that I was engaging significantly with my surroundings and their influences. I drew from the two different sites and their diverse histories, making connections between Wysing Arts and Gunpowder Park.

The content of the work has been coloured by events in my personal life. The sudden loss of my mother was overwhelming. Meanwhile, my children were approaching new and significant milestones.

My time at Wysing Arts gave me the opportunity to be more reflective and become absorbed in a new way of working. I spent two days a week at Wysing, plus countless hours at my studio in London exploring ideas around vegetal growth and the life cycle. I became interested in time lapse video making and the idea of speeding things up, watching plants germinate, grow and die in moments was fascinating. This became the starting point for 'capture'

The Making of 'capture' April 2003 Day 1.
Capture is a piece of land art involving the exchange of sods and earth between two sites with very different histories. The long established meadow at Wysing set in the tranquil Cambridgeshire countryside contrasts with the newly landscaped grassy bank at Gunpowder Park with its imported soil and seed. The word capture was cut out and transported by lorry between the respective sites. At Wysing the piece has been tended cut and watered while its twin at Gunpowder Park has been left to fend for itself. The process creates a physical and ephemeral link between the former Veal Farm and the former Royal Ordinance site.

'Shelf Life' Installation in Gallery at Wysing Sept 2004.
'Shelf Life' glass shelves, hyacinth jars and photographic transfers
"I bought the jars in charity shops in London and Cambridge. Behind each is the gradually fading transferred image of the plant to which my childhood memory has attributed the smell of old age and the close proximity of death."

'Growing Alphabet' installation in Gallery Wysing Sept 2004. Plaster casts, red cabbage, and grow lights.
"The permanence and order of the plaster casts references the beginnings of the learning process. Through the duration of the exhibition the seeds will germinate, grow and decay. This is both my experiment and my building block."

'Artefacts' is a museum case filled with constituent parts of the project in varying formats. The seed tray were the journey began houses the time lapse video piece 'ripple'. The other elements are remnants and testimony to the whole process.